Why is there such hoopla surrounding New Year’s Eve? Over the years we have attended dozens of New Year’s get-togethers; I cannot think of one that met expectations. Perhaps it’s because guests aren’t supposed to celebrate until midnight. This means, if your party begins at 8 p.m., you are obliged to mingle, tell, or listen to, bad jokes, gossip, and drink until the bewitching hour of midnight. So for four hours you chat with people you genuinely like. But let’s face it. Four hours held captive with the same people is three hours too long. Then comes the countdown and kisses all around at the stroke of twelve. Sometimes those kisses are welcome. Often, because of alcohol saturated breath, they are not.

I recall, wincing, how tortuous it felt during a Command Performance New Year’s event. This translates into dinner with bosses or senior executives of workplaces where some minion had come up with the grand idea of dining together at a restaurant, then retiring to the Big Boss House in time to celebrate the magic hour with glasses of bubbly. Of course, the expectation was---if you followed the tribal rules--- we remain in Big Boss House until at least 2 a.m. Forced laughter at dumb stories by said leaders is encouraged, nay, mandatory. This painful exercise led me to consider the origins of New Year’s Eve and reconsider its value.

In 46 BCE (Before Common Era), Roman Emperor Julius Caesar first established January 1 as New Year’s Day. Janus was the Roman god of doors and gates, and had two faces, one looking forward and one back. Caesar thought the month named after this god (“January”) would be the appropriate “door” to the coming year. He celebrated the first January 1 New Year by ordering the violent routing of revolutionary Jewish forces in the Galilee. Eyewitnesses say blood flowed in the streets. In later years, Roman pagans observed the New Year by engaging in drunken orgies—a ritual they believed constituted a personal re-enacting of the chaotic world that existed before the cosmos was ordered by the gods.* Aha! As I surmised, New Year’s Eve is fraught with No Good.

And New Year’s Resolutions? Research claims 38-45% of us (me!) never make resolutions and of those who do, only 8% are successful in achieving their goals. The idea of Resolutions reputedly began with the ancient Babylonians some 4,000 years ago in mid-March when crops were planted. Babylonians made promises to the gods to pay off their debts and return any ‘stuff’ they had borrowed. If they kept their word, the pagan gods would favor them in the coming year. If not, they would fall out of favour—a place no one wanted to be with those deities.

Then, much later, along came Emperor Caesar whose subjects also offered sacrifices to their god Janus, making promises of good behaviour for the coming year in return for favours. So began the Resolutions and the practise took root. Meanwhile, ever wonder about the origin of Auld Lang Syne?The Scottish poet, Robert Burns, wrote this New Year’s favourite. The 1788 piece literally translates to “old long since” and means “days gone by”. Which brings us to a couple of other tidbits to ponder as the New Year approaches…. -The world population is expected to reach nearly 7.6 billion at the start of 2018, the German Foundation for World Population (DSW) recently declared; over the past year, the number of people in the world has increased by 83 million - or approximately the population of Germany. -Stephen Hawking, Oxford professor and physicist, known for his groundbreaking achievements in science, is also recognized for making predictions about the future of humanity and Earth. He claims 100 years is how long we humans have left on Earth (BBC). This is a stark shift backward from the 1,000 years time limit that Hawking had predicted in 2016. According to Hawking in his BBC science series, Tomorrow’s World, climate change, overdue asteroid strikes, epidemics and population growth are to blame for the new century-long doomsday clock. Thus it is with trepidation, mixed with hope, we raise a glass and toast you and yours with sincere best wishes for a healthy, peaceful, and thoughtful 2018. *U.S. News and World Report December 23, 1996